Here is a great word for those who would like to be engaged in front-line Christian work but who cannot, due to ill health, circumstances, or other pressing obligations. In God’s sight those are fellow workers who merely support others by their gifts, interest and prayers. Barclay writes,
A man’s circumstances may be such that he cannot become a missionary or a preacher. Life may have put him in a position where he must get on with a secular job, and where he must stay in the one place, and carry out the routine duties of life and living. But where he cannot go his money and his prayers and his practical support can go; and, if he gives that support, he has made himself an ally of the truth. It is not everyone who can be, so to speak, in the front line; but every man by supporting those who are in the front line can make himself an ally of the truth.”1
Moreover, all should be allies. For all Christians should be fellow workers with all other Christians in the great task of disseminating the life-transforming truth of the Christian Gospel.
Christians are frequently and rightly distressed at the enormous problems that seem to exist within the visible Church. But there is some comfort in the fact that this has always been so, even in the church of the apostolic period. The next section of 3 John is a case in point. John has written of Gaius who, we are told, has been obedient to the truth as taught by the apostle, has entertained strangers, and has shown love and in turn been loved by all the brethren. But no sooner has John written of Gaius than the letter turns to a discussion of Diotrephes, who was apparently a contrast to Gaius at every point. Gaius had walked in the truth, but Diotrephes would not acknowledge John’s authority. Gaius had entertained strangers; Diotrephes not only failed to entertain them but had even forbidden others to do so. Gaius loved the brethren; Diotrephes was attempting to lord it over them.
In referring to Diotrephes John lists four areas in which the conduct of this man was out of line.
First, John says that Diotrephes “receiveth us not” (v. 9). This is a general statement, of course, and may be applied broadly. But it is also likely that it has a specific reference to the letter that John says he sent to the church earlier. Apparently this letter dealt with local problems, perhaps the reception of traveling teachers with which 3 John also deals. But Diotrephes had rejected the counsel, refused to receive the messengers who carried it, and may even have destroyed the letter. This rejection of the apostolic authority was wrong and unwarranted, but it is not rare. It is only an early example of the same rejection seen in those who today prefer the opinions of the latest theologian or popular religious writer to the binding authority of the inerrant Word of God.
Second, John says that Diotrephes was slandering him with “malicious words” (v. 10). That is, not content with a rejection of John’s authority, Diotrephes went on to justify his rebellion by explaining falsely why the counsels of John should not be followed. The Greek verb which is here translated “prating” comes from a root which was used of the action of water in boiling up and throwing off bubbles. Since bubbles are empty and useless, the verb eventually came to mean any indulgence in empty or useless talk. This was the nature of Diotrephes’ slander, though of course the words were not less “malicious” in that they were groundless.
Third, Diotrephes is said to have specifically defied John in regard to the duty to receive traveling missionaries. John says that “neither doth he himself receive the brethren” (v. 10). This was uncharitable, the kind of action that one might expect from one “who likes to put himself first.” But in addition to this, it was also a direct rejection of the unanimous instruction of the apostolic band.
Fourth, Diotrephes is also said to have insisted that others in the church follow his lead rather than that of the apostle and also to have exercised an unwarranted discipline over those who disobeyed him. He put them “out of the church” (v. 10). Diotrephes excommunicated loyal believers because they failed to side with him in his rejection of John’s authority.
1William Barclay, The Letters of John and Jude (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1958), 175-176.
